Cincinnati AMA Digital Summit: Quick Review

Today, I attended the (first ever) Cincinnati AMA Digital Summit at Great American Ball Park. While I will post a few separate blogs on various speakers and topics, I wanted to quickly review the event.

Overall, I give it a "thumbs up."

Can it be better next year? Yes. I hope it is better. However, you need a starting point in order to make improvements for the next time.

The choice of hosting the event at GABP was honorable, but not comfortable. I felt a little cramped in an "let's-play-poker" chair with my notebook on my lap and my coffee sitting on the floor (we desperately needed tables). The breakfast was good and the hosts kept us hydrated with coffee, water and sodas throughout the five-hour event.

At times, speakers had some technical challenges but it was tolerable. A few outside noises in the stadium seats above the 4192 club were distracting from time-to-time.

The presenters:

• Pete Blackshaw, EVP Strategic Services, Nielsen Online - good speaker (more on this later).
• Ted Murphy, Founder & CEO, IZEA (excellent...the best presenter of the day).
• Kristen Hanschu, Compendium Blogware. While the original speaker list had Daren Tomey as the topic speaker, Kristen was good despite a little plug for her firm (more on blogging in an upcoming post).
• Chris Heile, Vice President Advertising, HyperQuake, LLC (I was unable to attend his breakout session).
• Ed Estes, President & CEO, Web Media Tools, LLC (good speaker).
• John Atkinson, Co-founder & CEO, PimpMyNews (I was unable to attend his breakout session).

The event started with Cincinnati Bell's Lisa Sammons giving us a basic overview of mobile phones which started to turn into a sales pitch, before introducing Rosalynn Madaglia, Director of Research in Motion (RIM...i.e., The Blackberry). Unfortunately, Madaglia's "presentation" was nothing more than a sales pitch and contributed zero to the overall event. She even showed us two commercials.

Speaker's presentations were available on flash drives given to attendees. However, there were some rumblings about event bloggers being asked not to take photos or do digital recordings during the event. Now, I can see both sides to this argument, but the approach of "let's have a digital event and not allow anyone to do anything digital here" goes against the grain a bit. But, at the same time, I paid to attend, so why should the world be allowed to see the entire event for free?

Pete Healy, Crowbar Marketing, keep the event on schedule by serving as an excellent MC.

Surprisingly, only a couple of event sponsors were on hand to participate and peddle their wares and swag. Too bad they missed out on an excellent opportunity to do some marketing (at a digital marketing event).

More blogs on individual speaker topics and other observations coming soon.

Comments

[Ted Murphy]

I am happy that you enjoyed my presentation, I appreciate the feedback.

I didn't know that they weren't letting people take pictures or blog about it (I was doing so). That's pretty strange given the topic of the conversation. You would think that they would be encouraging people to blog, tweet, take photos and video as much as possible. That was an opportunity to have people tag all their media and rally behind the event.

Maybe that is a lesson learned for the next summit.

[Steve Phillips]

Also see: Future Value of Business blog "This Ain't No Party, This Ain't No Disco, This Ain't No Fooling Around" by David Bowman in his attempt to video the event.

[Betty Hakes]

I attended both Chris Heile and John Atkinson's presentation and found them both to be useful and informative and was able to come away with some good marketing ideas.

Pimpmynews seems like a great concept, I will be checking out their site soon.

Overall, I agree with your review of the summit. It needs improvement, but it was well worth my time and money.

-Betty

[David E. Bowman]

Overall it was a nice event. One complaint I forgot, and it was important - no lunch. I thought for sure we would get fed with a 1:00 end time. Boy was I hungry. I then made the fool hearty decision to eat a "Baconator" from Wendy's. Yep, that is 7 minutes less that I have to live. Delicious cholesterol...

I had a great time. First and foremost it is always nice to actually meet (in person) people that are interested in digital marketing. Thanks Cincy AMA and all who spoke.